It was only 21-months after his mother died, in October of 1960, at the ripe old age of 88, William Faulkner would die. Matter of fact, he finished his last book, “The Reivers” otherwise known as “The Thieves,” (a witty book indeed), and it was published in June of 1962, he died one month later, in July of 1962 of a heart attack (born in 1897).
Funny, when I look at such things, I look at correlations, especially when they involved psychology, art, and coincidences for those I like to study.
I’ve read all his books (prefer: “Soldiers Pay” and “Absalom, Absalom!” to the rest), have most of them as first editions, have a signed note by him, dated 1949, the year he was awarded the Nobel Prize, although he didn’t get it for another year, thereafter.
So why did he have his papers moved during these final days from one university to the next. Why did he do what he did, write a book and fill it with reminisces throughout, and how about all those characters he created, he brings them up here and there in the book. Or were they already created, and he just did a little shifting in his family history? We all know that he did just that, and it made for a lifetime of literature he could write about, something he could write about he knew, which the best thing to lecture and write about is. It liberated his world.
He was of course a drunk, and a womanizer (Joan and Meta and his wife can attest to that), nothing new; and his brother, his older brother was closer to his old mother than he, but yet it was he who died first. He was only 64-years old, not even old enough to collect his social security. Gave his Nobel Prize winnings to create an award giving committee of sort (Pen) Buried in St. Peters Cemetery, in Oxford, Mississippi, he now belongs to the world. He was a strange duck was he not.
